Why would NOT motivation be a central explanatory category for CHAT. It
seems so central such as saying the ZPD is a category more fit to
behaviorism. Guess it just took me by surprise. So, Phillip, when you say
you'd never assume students can be motivated are you saying that we
(teachers, parents, who ever) do not or can not organize the environment in
such a way to motivate students.
No Nate. I believe that you can do so. What I was trying to say was that the
tools and rules, even the culture, BY THEMSELVES do not achieve this. The
deployment of all these has to be towards a collective object (passionate,
collaborative learning). This may be something which the students themselves
bring to the system, but it is also something which the teacher may bring -
or destroy. The social rules of the classroom bestow on the teacher a
greater capacity to influence. One of the ways of destroying it is to
organise the environment in a contradictory way. Conversely one way of
building and intensifying it is to organize the environment in a congruent
way.
But the teacher as a transformational tool for the students is the critical
factor, not the organisation of the classroom. The greatest positive
influence on my intellectual life was a teacher with terrifyingly rigid and
authoritarian practices who also had an absolute and consuming passion for
his subject (history). So powerful was this contradiction that, as I type, I
am 17 again, simultaneously frightened and inspired. Dealing with that
contradiction in itself was a transformational exercise in expansive
learning for all of us in the class. I will not here bore you with the
extraordinary life paths of so many thst he taught, and how many of them.
like me, attribute so much to what at the time seemed to be a fundamentally
traumatic experience.
One thing, though. A good part of his achievement was that he knew exactly
who he would strengthen by pushing, and who he would destroy. He also knew
precisely what sort of push would be most effective with each individual. He
also produced - and knew he was producing - a community of practice which
operated outside the classroom as we collaborated for survival. But inside
the classroom we sat in rows, sat weekly rapid fire tests, were lectured at
and harangued, and waited in fear for the awful moment when he would choose
us to stand up and formally deliver our considered opinion to the class.
Phillip Capper
WEB Research
PO Box 2855
(Level 9, 142 Featherston Street)
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (64) 4 499 8140
Fx: (64) 4 499 8395
-----Original Message-----
From: Nate Schmolze [mailto:vygotsky@home.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 18 July 2001 04:22
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: RE: active learning/teaching at the 7000 level
At 07:28 AM 7/17/01, you wrote:
> thank you, Phillip, for this caution - finding the term
"motivation" an
>explanatory principle more appropriate for behaviorism than CHAT, i myself
>would never assume that students can be motivated. so when you read-in
>that assumption, i'm glad that you disagree with it.
Confusedly,
Nate :)
>>
>>
>>What I am suggesting is that the teacher must first be able to create a
>>collective object of collaborative learning.
>
> yes, absolutely - i appreciate you taking the time to clarify and
>elucidate this - as i wrote my response i considered if i were being too
>brief - and being lazy took up the better part of valor.
>
>>The practices and processes
>>that Phillip suggests then form part of a portfolio of tools that create
>>an
>>environment which nurtures the collective object. This prerequisite
>>requires
>>that the teacher is able to create a zoped focused on the subject matter
>>for
>>the course into which the students wish to flow. Or, to put it bluntly,
>>the
>>teacher herself must be able to demonstrate her own passion for the
>>subject,
>>and also relate it meaningfully to the personal objects and aspirations of
>>the students. Without that, no creative classroom practices will work.
>
> i was so glad to see the term "passion" used - Vera has been
doing work
>on the affective domain which is, i believe, the most critical element in
>teaching/learning - i wish that i had a larger working vocabulary to
>express this.
>>
>>
> the story about you son's academic success i liked, being that it
>supports some of my beliefs about education. As he said -
>> He replied 'They're very
>>good with me and a few others. But for the rest the teachers and students
>>reinforce each other's apathetic rituals."
>
> and of course, in any classroom there is always resistance to
>collaboration, for whatever reason.
>
> anyway, i sure hope that this is of some help for Barb.
>
>phillip
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*
George Bernard Shaw:
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital
punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that
breed their kind
****************************************************************************
**
Nate Schmolze
http://members.home.net/schmolze1/
schmolze1@home.com
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*
Albert Camus (1957):
An execution is not simply death. It is just as different from the privation
of life as a concentration camp is from prison. It adds to death a rule, a
public premeditation known to the future victim, an organization which is
itself a source of moral sufferings more terrible than death. Capital
punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed,
however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the
death penalty would have
to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would
inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had
confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in
private life.
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*
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